Landon “Sonny” Cox is the greatest high school basketball coach in the state of Illinois. But his office at Martin Luther King Jr. High School is so cramped and crowded it feels like a broom closet. There are no trophies, plaques, or bronzed basketballs on the walls–there’s no room for them; just some crudely clipped, yellowing newspaper articles. The brown carpet is threadbare.
Still, Cox does have the horses, and if coaching college ball is what he wants, their successes should have earned him a job coaching college ball by now. In eight years of coaching the Jaguars of King High School–a public school at 44th Street and Drexel Boulevard on the city’s south side–he’s won nearly 90 percent of his games (213 victories, 29 defeats). And he’s not up against yokels; King plays in Chicago’s public league, the country’s toughest basketball conference.
It may be sour grapes. Twice the Illinois High School Association has investigated charges that Cox exercised “undue influence” recruiting players–most recently regarding Rashard Griffith. And twice Cox has been exonerated. Almost all of his players have earned their high school diplomas, and more than half went on to college (usually thanks to scholarships Cox helped them get). Until this summer, when Selvie was arrested on charges of drug possession (a trial is scheduled for October), none of Cox’s players had ever run afoul of the law. He shields his team, requiring any college recruiters to contact players only through him. But that aggravates college coaches far more than it does Cox’s players. They credit Cox for their success. And they remain fiercely loyal: “Coach Cox takes care of us,” says former all-state guard Reggie King. “He’s like my father.”
“But I’ve never even smoked a joint. And if you think of all the rooms I’ve been in where dope was being smoked, well man, that’s something. I guess it goes back to the time when I was small and my father caught me smoking a cigarette. He put me in a room and made me puff all of those cigarettes. They made me sick as a dog, and I always remember that.”
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Sonny Turner, a trumpet player, remembers when Sonny came to town. “He was good. He was this young cat coming up from Ohio to the big city, gonna be a star.”
“They were really needing teachers bad in those days,” says Cox. “They were hiring them off the street. The man said, ‘Look, why don’t you sub for a few days? You can make $35 a day. You don’t have to do anything but sit in front of the class and keep the kids quiet.’ I started thinking, ‘Man, I can make a lot of money. I could substitute until three. Then go down to Chess Records, where we were doing studio work. Then go to my gigs making $50 a night. I could clean up.’
